vegan food

[Thomas]

J,

It's a complicated issue, but here's a stab at it.

Many people think that wines are pumped with chemicals and additives, a situation not so subtley fostered by certain anti-alcohol groups. But true winemaking requires few, if any, chemicals. Mainly, chemical treatment will take place when something has gone wrong and needs fixing and even then it is judicious and under govt regulation.

But as to "organic" let's take one example.

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is used by the overwhelming majority of winemakers and has been used in winemaking since the 2nd century in Rome. It also appears naturally in our stomachs when we digest, in cheese, yogurt, bread, and in wine as a by-product of fermentation. The natural levels of SO2 in wine are not sufficient to hold off oxidation so winemakers add a little more. Now, if SO2 occurs naturally as a by-product of fermentation, is that or is that not an organic process? Is adding to an organic process inorganic?

To make matters more confusing, the federal govt. mandates Contains Sulfites on wine labels when the SO2 tops a certain minimum level in wine, so if the SO2 is under that level, then the warning is not required. Is it misleading to claim the wine is not organic when the warning appears on the label, organic when the warning does not, yet in each case there may be SO2 in the wine?

To add to the confusion, when the sulfite mandate came about, a winery that did not distribute outside its home state was exempt from having to put the dire words on its labels. But the SO2 might still have been in there at higher levels than the minimum allowed for exclusion of the mandate.

Some companies use these rulings and the overall confusion of matters like this to subvert the real meaning of organic, which to me means that nothing man-made or unnatural is added in food or wine processing.

Organic in the vineyard is another matter entirely but the same should hold true about using or not using unnatural products in sprays or dumped on the soil.

Biodynamic viticulture is a lot more specific than organic, but neither viticultural practices address the winemaking process.

[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 12-10-2005).]